You try, You lie, You love me still
by Kuro49
Summary: Charles/Erik/Charles. Cape Citadel. September 1963. Erik can't stop hearing Charles' voice in his head and instead of coming clean, Charles is choked full of secrets.
1. You Try

This started as a single baby idea (that I can't reveal just yet) featuring yet my favorite ! type of Charles and Erik. But it grew to be a monster. Mind you, I normally write ~1000 words oneshots if not drabbles. I don't own! :)

XXX

**You try, You lie, You love me still**

XXX

He is a ten (_Magneto_.) out of ten.

But you only ever think you deserve all the negatives in the world.

000

Sometimes he wakes up with Charles' voice in his head.

And it doesn't matter whether he is a few states over or halfway around the world. He hears his voice and it sounds very much like the man himself is, standing on his toes, whispering directly into his ear.

(But it can't be this way, not when Charles is earth-bound for the rest of his life.)

"_Erik, Erik."_

Sometimes it is urgent, sometimes it is gentle. Sometimes he even feels fingers ghosting over his skin, like he doesn't dare to touch.

"_You're not..."_

His voice. It can be meaningless at times, or heated, like when he mentions co-existence. Other times, Charles is murmuring bits and pieces of a larger conversation, like he is filling in Erik on what he has missed. Beside the one thing from the first time Charles entered his mind, it is never something they have discussed before, or something they should have talked about. Instead, it is always the things they are never brave enough to bring up.

At the start, he has considered it as Charles' telepathy reaching out for him. A yearning stretch to pull him back a little closer because that voice is as real as anything he can touch. But then, he will fall asleep with his helmet on when a mission stretches him too thin. Collapsing on a chair, and ultimately passing out has seemed a good idea. His eyes are shut and that last slippery hold he has on hope is gone when the voice returns and it is still whispering things in his head.

"_Erik."_

He still can't really be sure.

Sometimes he will interact with the voice.

And sometimes, the voice can't seem to hear him at all.

"_Magneto!"_

And then it is nearly six months after Cuba before he finally comes to terms with himself, that his mind has been filling the voids in his head with Charles' voice. He doesn't know what he is supposed to do, still he isn't blind enough to ignore the blatant implications his brain has been viciously trying to get him to notice.

"_This," sometimes he can even see actions in his head: Charles will make a wild gesture with his hands like he is having difficulties articulating what he wants to say. "This makes you tired and it gives me hives."_

_And from the sound of his voice, Charles is exasperated. (But these aren't things Charles will ever say.)_

_But the voice keeps going and this feels like something that should have happened anyway._

"_This," he says, "is wrong."_

_Only, it never has._

_Erik is disgusted with the world, nearly enough to make him want to scrub at his skin until it is bright red and he no longer wants to kill something with his bare hands, but he doesn't know why, even though he feels like he should._

_He wants to push blunt fingernails against the skin until everything is washed out by the rushing of blood in his ears and the bones beneath his grasp have snapped._

_Erik drinks the remaining alcohol in his glass and Charles is biting at his lips like he has something he needs but doesn't really want to say._

"_Just spit it out."_

_He ends the needless torture for two and waits patiently for Charles to organize his thoughts into words normal people can understand. Charles' eyes aren't the right shade of blue when he finally does speak his mind._

"_I feel the same way."_

And then Charles fades out into white, just as the sun catches his eyes from behind the blinds.

"You should rest some more."

But that isn't Charles.

He sits up in alarm and Mystique is sitting at the end of the bed with her hands in her lap, eyes bright with an emotion he doesn't quite catch.

"…How long?" He wants to ask whether he has muttered anything in his sleep even if the gold in her eyes don't hold a hint of implication. But they've all learned to act.

"Barely three hours since we've been back." She says with a shake of her head and her gaze softens with exasperation. "We'll settle the remaining details. You took the majority of the hits, you need to rest."

She doesn't wait for him to reply, she catches his dry swallow, the lump at his throat, (the strangled hold Charles still has on him) and gestures to the cup of water at the head of the bed. She also doesn't ask to see his injuries or the impact of the last lashes of the explosion. Mystique stands up, the bed no longer dips and he drains the water in the glass.

"I'll wake you up if anything urgent comes up."

He trusts her to understand the level of urgency that he will wake up for.

000

"_You're not alone."_

He disagrees when the bed is empty and the sheets are cold.

_"But we are the same, Erik, you and I."_

He wants to say no.

000

When the nights get cold and mornings doesn't come fast enough, his bones ache, like he is an old man and there is still a yearning he can't quite forget. Erik stretches out his limbs and the dull throbbing reaches a peak of relief before it dissolves back into that steady drum of not-quite-pain tapping at his joints.

Maybe he is older than he feels. Or maybe this is the effect of pushing a little too hard, a little too fast, an over-estimation of his limits. But he knows it isn't any of these things.

It's Charles. (It's always been him.)

And these are just the good nights when Charles isn't urgent and desperate or near tears in his head.

But when it gets bad, everything reminds him of bullets that has murdered his mother and needles that has pierced black ink into the skin of his forearm. It is violent and he is taut with anticipation for when the world collapses over him.

_"Erik."_

Only there are no rubbles falling over his head, nothing like steel cables snapping from above. There is only Charles' voice echoing from a void of blue and a light touch that lands on his arm. But it is still alarming and his heart feels like it wants to claw its way out from his throat.

_"Erik."_

And it's desperate, near frantic. The touch is lined with an edge that presses into the skin with a force that hasn't drawn blood yet. Charles' voice hitches and Erik might just end up crying if Charles doesn't.

_"I—"_ There is blood, he thinks finally._ "I can't feel my legs."_

(There is a sob. It might be his.)

Erik wakes up with a horrible grasp on what his head has been stuffing his dreams with and it is a mangled mess made of Charles' voice, the color blue and a single sentence he keeps murmuring over and over again, like a mantra, or a warning of a night that he should never forget.

He reaches a hand to run his fingers through his hair and feels a wetness on his cheeks instead.

"_You're not alone."_

Charles says.

The dread leaves him impossibly strung out but he can't possibly sleep again.

"…No, you're wrong, Charles."

And his voice sounds horribly hoarse to his ears.

000

It is another two months and he is living on four hours of sleep a day at best. It keeps him standing and walking but nothing all that functional is really going on up in his head.

Erik doesn't know what it is exactly. It may be the sugar sweet burn that he is beginning to acknowledge but it still doesn't change the fact that it is getting harder to fall asleep to Charles' voice and then wake up just to realize that he has been dreaming of Charles too.

It makes him obsessed.

And paranoid. His fingers twist and itch and he is dying to get his hands on something solid.

Something that isn't just a whisper in his head. Something that isn't a wavering image of a man he never had the time to memorize every detail to.

And then he will lie in bed for the next 30 minutes, regretting with a blank stare at the ceiling of his room as the sun breaks out bright lines across the floors. Even when he finally gets up and out of the tangle of sheets, he will only feel all the more pathetic about himself.

This is all wrong, he tells the Charles he has selfishly conjured up.

_Yes, it is… isn't it, Erik?_

Erik runs a hand across his face, exhaustion teeters on an apex he can't reach. There is a curve of a hot red mouth that descends to his ears. Charles is waiting on that collapse, Erik knows.

_This is so very wrong._

000

It is September of 1963.

Erik doesn't know and Charles hasn't reached out.

And it is in the silence that something tightens.

000

Erik has always had a deep-set fear.

One that has taken root the moment he felt Charles' presence in his head.

But only does it come to him, with a swift stab that doesn't quite reach the heart, when Charles admits, out loud and to the world, that he knows everything about him.

And his fear goes a little like this:

"You look like someone I should know."

He doesn't know how it has happened or what has happened. But Charles is looking at him and there is real confusion (not the kind where he is still figuring things out with a bleary blink of his half-lidded eyes.) There is something in the way his voice crooks out at him, like a wiry finger that beckons until the fire is consuming them both.

Still.

"But I don't know you." There is a certain stress that tangles his thoughts and clenches his mind. _Who are you? And why are you—_

It's short-lived when he finally wakes up.

But the realization never really leaves him. (_You're alone, my friend_.)

000

"My brother?"

I am in love with him.

He wants to say.

"Your brother." Emma repeats.

"He is here." Her lips are blue, her cheeks are blue, and blue is the only thing she should ever be in. (Erik knows he is horribly biased but he knows he needs this, maybe even more than her.)

"Isn't that what I just said, Mystique?" Her blue eyes narrow even when she crosses her legs at the table and readjusts the miniskirt in her seat. "Xavier is in town."

"What is he doing here?"

Magneto finally finds his voice.

"The same reason we are here, sweetheart. Aren't you the mastermind?"

She tries hard to be unlike herself but she opens her mouth and everything falls apart around her. It may have something to do with being a telepath.

But it isn't him or Emma that speaks up next in a mixture of horror and faint despair.

It is Mystique.

"Cape Citadel."

000

He doesn't think this will end well, not one bit.

Not when he is still sorry for everything that he has and hasn't done. Not when he has grown obsessed with him. Not when it hasn't even been a year since they've last deserted the other on a beach far from home.

Erik waits for the blueprints to arrive, spreads it out on the tables and devises a strategy on two hours of sleep.

He catches the flashes of stress and worry in Mystique's eyes, he also sees Emma's intentions glinting just below the first frost in her eyes. She is keeping tabs and damn, if he knows what she has hidden beneath the diamond shell.

"Nothing has changed?" Mystique sounds grave, but she hasn't been any different, not since she heard news of Charles' arrival.

"We are going ahead with our plan."

"Is that really the best choice, Magneto?" Emma smiles, almost sweetly, as she leans back from the table. Her hips don't press into the edge but her arms are still securely crossed over her chest.

"You have something better?"

Her eyes wane when her smile widens. Erik notices, even when her eyes are cast down to her immaculate nails.

"No, just making sure." _That's all._

Her lashes flutter, and the smile on her perfect face only ever deepen into something that almost resembles a scowl. And then she takes her leave.

000

Erik likes the blue of her skin but he is in love with the blue of his eyes.

The rippling of blue across her pink fleshy tones. The blue in his irises when he catches his gaze from across the room.

He likes the color blue the same way he is in love with her brother. (In an entirely different way he loves her too.)

000

"This isn't what Charles would want."

Mystique stands straight as the Brotherhood filters out, mission briefs stuffing their heads full with uncertainties. Her voice is quiet, determined, and she is awfully still.

"This isn't about what he wants." Magneto splays a broad palm against the papers, their plans.

"Then what is this about?" She looks like she wants to say more, she looks like she will. Erik waits for her. And in the end she realizes they are all still stuck in the nuclear threat that went out with a silent boom in a too blue sky. "You can't be trying to get back at him."

Her fingers absentmindedly trace the edge of the papers.

"No," Magneto shakes his head because keeping her out is the one thing he can't do, not after everything he has taken from Charles, "this is about what I want."

_And you want him, don't you see?_

Just like 1962, nothing goes according to plan.

000

His feet touch bare earth when he steps off the plane. Something has shifted in the air and Magneto feels overwhelmed for that fraction of a second when the metal are all pulling him in.

There is another plane, parts of it, lying in ruins. There are rapid firings of guns and knifes sliding against their sheaths as a last resort, metal whipping out against leather and the edge is warm.

He sucks in a breath, tries to remind himself that this is bound to happen.

A futuristic one day, so why not today?

Magneto feels metal frames within the base. And the world around him is finally on full-alert, blaring red with blood that hasn't been shed, not just yet.

"Ch—The X-Men are already here."

000

The Florida sun feels different, even though it is very much the same.

It is 1963.

In an effort to decrease another nuclear threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis, someone by the name of Professor X has a plan to shut down Cape Citadel, a missile base for the United States of America. The same one Magneto plans to takeover as the Brotherhood's first show of hand for mutant supremacy.

The world is quiet and no one knows, not just yet.

But some things go wrong (and one thing goes right) along the way.

000

This isn't whispered in the girl's bathroom, there isn't such thing at the Brotherhood anyway. This is said out loud, and into the vast open grounds of foreign soil where they can both see the bellowing of that one man's cape.

"He isn't coming back you know."

"Erik, he was never here in the first place." _Because it goes without saying, he has always been with my brother._

"Even."

"Even after everything that happened in Cuba." She reassures her.

"…I never thought Magneto as a sentimental man."

"Then you still got a long way to go as a telepath."

"Don't compare me to him. I'm not Xavier." _He's got tricks I never want to learn._

They follow after him.

000

It takes all of ten minutes to get in.

If he squints pass the early morning sun, he can see blue waves and golden sand all over again.

But right now, all he is looking at is grey concrete and metal infrastructure. And a man that is Charles Xavier. Except there is blood and that tangy cooper sting that hits his nose can't be anyone else's.

Charles is hurt.

"Who?"

He asks and he doesn't even care when it comes out sounding grave and dangerous.

"…Erik?" Charles is fighting back against the pain that flares in places he can feel when he thinks he is seeing a ghost. Because this is just a concussion and Erik shouldn't be here. "What are y—" Except he is always willing to believe he is wrong.

Even when he is right.

"Who hurt you?"

And that isn't a fragment of his imagination.

"No, wait." Charles has a hand to his temple and he is concentrating on clearing a space in his head for both everything that is happening in the missile base and the current man that is walking closer and closer to him. And yes, he is as real as they come. "What?"

Even if he can't feel a thing, he knows Erik can see that his legs are bent at an awkward angle beneath him.

"I asked," Erik bends down, tucks a hand beneath his knees (Charles doesn't feel any of this, not how gentle or how harsh Erik is being with him) and picks him up from the ground, "who hurt you?"

Charles has a hard time swallowing some of the feelings that surged beyond the pain. Shaking his head, he only says, "my chair please."

Erik's eyes are very much like steel.

"Was it the humans?"

Charles grits his teeth and remains very still. "It doesn't matter."

Erik stops, Charles feels the hand on his back tighten, like an actually physical hold can protect him from anything these days.

"My chair, Erik."

He knows it sounds like a plea. But if it gets him what he wants (to get as far away as Erik as he possibly can) then he doesn't mind it. He doesn't mind a lot of things these days.

"…It's Magneto."

They try not to make this into a power struggle.

Charles eventually nods when Erik beckons the metal of his wheelchair, through the debris, and puts him back into it.

"You're bleeding." Erik says.

Charles looks down at himself and there is a mess of blood on the front of his shirt. He leans heavily back and waves him off. "I'll live."

000

Erik has felt Charles' throat beneath his fingers.

Still, it takes almost a year after Cuba before it becomes clear.

Charles is his to hurt.

In the same way his powers has led that stray bullet to his spine, Erik can only ever hurt Charles physically. Because his mind is his own and Erik can never get to him.

He sees the blood and every attempt at control comes snapping away and there is only rage burning and licking at him from the inside out. Magneto is left out to guard the remains of what his eyes perceives because his strange mindset goes something along the lines of this: I can hit you, I have hit you, and you can most definitely take it and still hate me all the same. But what you can't ever do is stop this.

Because I love you too.

(He has made his peace.)

Charles' blood stains his hands and while the gaping wound is not his to own, he will claim and this will be his peace.

000

Havok is bleeding. Banshee has bruised if not broken ribs. And Beast has blood on his hands, blood that could belong to anyone, just not him.

"The Professor."

Sean gasps with a hand on the walls. There are papers scattered everywhere and he is scrambling to make sense of the twisted hallways in the base. He hears silence when Beast should have been following him and turns.

"Han—"

He sees blue. But it is all wrong.

"Banshee."

Raven stands, bare feet nudging at the bodies collapsed over the ground. Her greeting is enough to startle him into sucking in a sharp breath of air. Only a sharp sting of sulphur engulfs him in a burst of red smoke and he feels metal pressing right up against the skin of his throat, a hand clasps over his mouth.

"Azazel."

Sean breathes out through his nose and surrenders easily.

"Mystique."

That Russian brawl rumbles from the throat and no one misses the curl of amusement in his voice. He lifts the blade away from the tender flesh but keeps a hand over Banshee's mouth.

Alex bursts in with an energy that speaks volumes even when his voice is low and light. "Let him go."

"We aren't here to hurt anyone." Angel steps out from a hole torn through the walls with a stack of papers in her arms. Her bronze skin glows beneath the flickering white bulbs when she hands the documents over to Mystique.

"Says the traitors." Alex spits out as he eyes the situation, he doesn't miss the turn of Angel's lips, neither does he miss Azazel's hand falling from Sean's mouth.

Everything goes into several black briefcases before Mystique presses two fingers to her ear, voice dominating in a room full of mutants.

"Magneto."

Only she hears the static before his voice on the other end.

"We've destroyed all the equipments and taken all the documents."

And that's when Hank walks into the room, claws still lined with red.

"The black bird is done for."

It isn't a claim as much as it is a sharp slap to the face.

"You mean—"

"That—"

"I guess it's been decided then."

Mystique shrugs and the scales on her shoulders seem to flutter with the motion but no one in the room misses that sudden clench around their chests that echoes in all of their heads.

Alex wants a democracy he won't get. Sean just wants it to stop hurting so much. And Hank, he reluctantly agrees.

000

"Why didn't you wait? There was no way you could've got out of there unscathed."

There are armed soldiers and scientists and nuclear weapons in the making.

"I know. But, there was no time."

Guns and knives and information that can, once, bring you to your knees.

"You could've—" _asked._

"No, Erik. I wouldn't have."

But this all comes after. (After Erik stops the hurting, after Charles can begin to think through the pain, after they have both settled.) For now, they make do with what they have.

000

It isn't self-preservation. It is moments before.

It is that four lettered word he blames everything on. (And his head is silent when he pretends its hate.)

"Come back with us, just stay with the Brotherhood until you are healed and the blackbird is fixed."

"It won't be longer than a week." Charles warns but it isn't really the warning he is going for, not when the pain is blending his words together, bringing the trains of thoughts to come crashing at each other.

"Any longer and we might get sick of each other anyway."

Charles huffs out a laugh and barely manages to say. "Yes… maybe."

But that _impossible_ booms loudly in their heads. And it is the kind of loud that even Charles' telepath can't match.

(No one mentions that bringing the X-Men back to their mansion is a choice as well.)

000

Erik doesn't think he can go when he is standing right where he has always wanted to be (even though there is no recollection.)

He runs a hand down Charles' cheek, feels the pressure of skin and then dripping blood.

Charles finally looks up at him with those eyes.

(Has it really only been a year?)

"Erik."

Breathless and hoarse. Like there is an itch in his throat and only the sound of his name can make it go away, for however short the time is.

Erik pushes back memories and presses his fingers against the gaping wound. His hand is red with blood and rage.

"Just… try to stay awake for me, won't you?"

He is trying to keep the pleading from his voice but that smile on those lips only ever brought out the worst in him.

"I… you only ever have to ask, my friend."

It can't ever be enough, not with the way he still looks at him.

Erik has a great deal of hopes and dreams. None of which comes true.

XXX Kuro

I'm afraid, it gets worst. OTL


	2. You Lie

I thought long and hard about what the Brotherhood's mode of transportation was until it finally hit me like a red brick in the head: _Azazel_. (Okay, that was pretty bad, but it was true, he just vanished from my mind like _that_… ok I'll stop... now. OTL)

Because I have a horrible sense of humor and don't really know how romancing someone should work, also, I don't own.

XXX

**You try, You lie, You love me still**

XXX

It starts (_X_.) with hope.

And before you know it, you are looking at faith in the eyes.

000

It is unplanned and near instincts because it has spiralled out of control the moment his body breaks the water and he has a man in his arms, all stiff muscles beneath his fingertips and violent backlashes keeping him away. The tension is thick and it coils at him, striking with a venomous edge. Charles is almost surprised he hasn't been cut to bleed out in the water already.

That first thought he presses into the recess of the man (Erik)'s mind.

That all-knowing comfort that smoothes the sharp pain down into a dull throb.

_You're not alone._

He thinks and hopes that it is enough. It, barely, passes the threshold. And that is the first time his powers unfold without his control. His innocence is still justified.

It is 1962.

And he has scorched him deep.

000

He drifts in and out of consciousness.

Charles is in his chair one moment and Erik's arms the next. The blood seems to have slowed or maybe he has already lost enough because what he sees might not really be there and what is happening might all be just a fragment of what his mind has forced on everyone else. Charles doesn't like the pain when it is overpowering his sense of self-control but he is ironic. (They may be acting along his storybook and he would've never known.)

He forces himself to open his eyes.

A steady breath and he finds himself unclenching his fingers from the white knuckle grip he has on the hand rest of his wheelchair.

He feels the entire plane elevate but the tension is still pressing in at him from all sides.

The boys' physical pain, the Brotherhood's uneasy respect, and the two voids that he can't and will not touch. Raven is sitting across from him and Charles decides he doesn't want to know whether she is analyzing him or Erik.

But her eyes are tender and he thinks, it's enough, just soft enough so he brushes right by her mind.

And then he turns away because the tender edge is always going to reveal something he shouldn't know. He wipes down the condensation from the windows of the Brotherhood's plane because it is important he gets to see this through his own eyes. There is water on his hand and he thinks, that slight distortion is the best he'll ever have.

Charles doesn't seem to notice Erik's eyes and the minemine_mine_ that burns the green a touch of blue. But he does, nothing escapes a telepath, only he doesn't care for the change that is due.

He wipes his hands down the front of his pants, feels the pain flaring like a third degree burn without the scars and applies pressure to the wounds.

This is still 1963, almost a year since it all went wrong and he is going somewhere that isn't home.

Charles closes his eyes reluctantly and lets Erik direct the flow of iron in his blood.

And no one says a thing.

000

Charles has an itch, right over everywhere that he can feel but can't reach, an itch that extends right below the skin.

It feels like there is an extension of himself, somewhere, out there. But the brain is a messy place (every telepaths know this, have to, or else, because the mind likes to leave nasty surprises for the careless attempts you make and make.)

Charles doesn't notice. No, he doesn't realize the missing piece in his head is gone. But it will happen, must. And it might just be enough to make him proud. Or simply reel back with disgust for the finally realization of what he can and has done.

There is still a fragile balance at work.

But it never takes long to bring anything down. (Because, _you're never really alone_.)

000

"Take them."

He takes him to a room and it is simple. A bed, a dresser, a table and a linking bathroom. Erik holds out his hand and there are two white pills sitting there in his palm.

Charles shakes his head gingerly, and still everything hurts.

"I don't need to."

Erik frowns.

"It'll help with the pain."

"I'll be fine." No, it hurts but he can't have it any other way. But he can't tell Erik that. No, it will ridden him with another wave of guilt to add to his collection of regrets. And Charles really can't have that, he still feels too much for him.

"Sedative?"

Charles gives him a glare but even he knows it is draining. "None of that."

"Then what will you have me do?"

"Just… patch me up?"

Charles asks but picks up on the distress Erik is emanating, now that he has shed the helmet and the distracting cape. But nothing changes and he doesn't peek.

"…Not until you take them." Erik pushes the tablets into his palm, white pills in a pale hand with blood dried beneath the fingernails. Charles looks up at him with defiance, a sort of daring adrenaline that makes him look small and almost defenceless. "What if I said no?"

"Then I'll have to drug you." Erik doesn't fall for the cornered animal, only because he has his back turned, hands rummaging in the first aid box Mystique has shoved into his arms the moment they arrived back at the Brotherhood. She can smile and smile but he can still see the frown in her eyes.

"You won't."

_Wishful thinking._

"Try me, Charles."

The needle hurts when it pierces the skin of his arm. But he knows it hurts Erik more than it can physically hurt him. Still, Erik goes through with his promise and Charles compromises for the choice that inflicts more pain.

000

It goes both ways. This thing that they have.

The match strikes up and another one burns out. There are tallies marking up the walls in their heads. White chalk on a black board and lines scratched into stone.

No one keeps track, not by a long run, and neither wins the battles when their eyes are on the war right beyond the horizon. Still, they are riddled with scars. And it's still lovely even when it shouldn't be.

000

Charles feels Alex's gaping bloody wound, the one Sean has stitched shut on a kitchen stool and fumbling fingers in all that blood. There are rolls and rolls of used gauze and Beast's directions keeping all of them in check and alive by a margin.

He feels Sean's bruised and broken ribs. He feels Hank's internalized horror at having drawn blood on men he has tried to identify with.

But none of them feels him inside their heads.

He keeps his footsteps light, nearly silent and when the world around them is still raging with activity, they don't notice, not what he has done and is still doing.

And despite all the pain, he too has his own. But not enough, it is never enough to satisfy what the past has created in him. (An empty endless pit that needs to be filled, a hollow hole that tears right through him until he is shreds of what once resembled a proper Charles F. Xavier.)

When he has lost his ability to feel, he has thought that there won't ever be a method to get it back.

Like a sharp burn, the pain strikes him and the first thing that he feels is relief.

When he can't afford to leave the mansion, he keeps them all connected. It has started as an attempt to reach out and feel for the feelings he no longer receives. And then he learns of the possibilities and his fingers are no longer positioned at his temple. Rather, his hands are clutching at places he can but should not feel. Not when the pain that is running wild across his body isn't really his. Not when the cuts aren't marring across his skin. Not when the blows, happening in real time, are landing on flesh that doesn't belong to him.

No, none of it is really his, but. Still.

Charles takes their pain and makes it his own.

There is shame and guilt.

Because even though his intrusion relieves their pain, it isn't why he does it at all. He is taken to the feeling and knows it as a compensation of what he can't feel below the waist, below the spinal column where the bullet has hit.

Sometimes he doesn't think about it, and it ends up being enough.

(When the blows are hurting but not hitting.)

And somewhere along the way, he now needs the pain.

000

He wakes up like he hasn't slept at all. His eyes open in the middle of a train of thought.

In the grand schemes of things, a century is a blink of an eye (and they, they don't really exist.) Their past is barely a fraction of a flutter of eyelashes. Charles should know, he is an evolutionary geneticist among everything else.

He is lying in bed, and Erik is sitting in a chair pulled close to his side.

"…We are biologically prepared for a world that is about to come." Charles says as he leans back against the pillows, eyes glazed over and unfeeling with the morphine Erik has forced on him, and looking nothing like a patient who has just woken up. He sounds like he is continuing a conversation he has been having and someone should know this isn't right. "While homo sapiens," he pauses, "they are made for a world that no longer exists."

"…I never thought you ever considered a world where there is a separation between you and all those humans you are so fond of, Charles."

Erik flips through another document they have gathered from the Cape Citadel base but the movement of his fingers are absentminded, his eyes never left Chares' face, not since he has opened his eyes. He tries to sound his cynical self, it doesn't really work, but neither points that out.

"It's not a separation, it's a distinction. But… I do, I have to, even when… I don't want to." _I really would like to think we are the same_. His eyes flutter close, almost in exhaustion. "Even though the similarities between us outweigh anything else, I am still… different." _It is in my genes, you see._

_But you're not alone. _Erik stares, expression grave.

_No, Erik, I have you if not all the mutants I once saw in Cerebro._

But, (yes.)

Still, (no.)

Charles opens his eyes and honesty is the only thing coloring the blue.

"I like them."

Charles' confession isn't unexpected. It just isn't the choice of words Erik would use.

_You want to be them._

Erik thinks. And Charles leans his head back against the pillows but he eventually nods and says.

"But I can't."

Like it is a bad thing.

000

When he finally takes off his helmet, there should be something.

A revelation, the kind that shakes the ground in which they, not him, can still walk on. Anything.

But in his bleary state of pain, there is nothing. He feels Erik's mind, the same anguish and slow-burning anger flickering in the background, and there is no reassurance, just a deep sense of resemblance.

Because what he feels is exactly what he has expected to see.

(He should've known, something isn't right.)

Metal helmet aside, it is almost like stepping back into his own head.

000

Erik sleeps uneasy that night, like two months ago when the voice finally allows him to interact (but never to direct.) But Charles is in the next room. So how is that not enough?

"_Don't."_

_He begs._

"_Don't do it."_

_Charles' eyes are pleading, his shirt sleeve is rolled up to expose the forearm, _**214782**_, right over where the tip of the needle is hovering over the pale unmarked skin. The metal piece touches, the blood pulses. The rush of pain borders on possessive. Someone is hurting, and it isn't Charles._

"_Erik, please. I don't want this."_

_He draws blood._

Erik wakes up with Charles' voice still echoing pleads in his ear. Lips feverishly red and slick, fingers flitting, almost punishing.

That morning at breakfast, he asks Mystique to bring her brother some food and no one gives any indication that they have heard him pacing since four in the morning.

000

It is all pleasantly loud when he rejoins the rest of world that doesn't consist of Erik and Raven and the boys standing awkwardly at the door.

It's been three days.

Voices overlapping voices, conversations taking a life of their own. It is a nice take over, a welcomed domination despite the stifling tension in the air.

This is a meeting of some sort where Beast asks for available tools and materials to fix a broken Blackbird and Raven directs an analysis of suspicious documents from Cape Citadel offhandedly. There are menacing glares and missing members (Angel and the White Queen). Some stay silent while others viciously attack with venomous retorts every other corner of the conversation.

But they all remain, relatively, civil and whether it is an act of kindness for their leaders or a mutual respect for the fact that they are all mutants at the very least, Charles is grateful.

He presses the pads of his fingers over the gauze, the full pain flares and it all feels real again, or it does until a hand wraps around his wrist and pulls his fingers away, relieving the pressure.

Charles looks up and sees Erik. "Hello."

"Don't do that." His eyes are warning but it never really does anything, not when he still wants him enough to hurt.

"This just feels a little too unreal." Charles shrugs with a faint smile even when he still feels nothing but the fading pain that Erik has forbid him from inflicting on himself.

"Trust me," but maybe Erik is not the best person, his bias has always been overwhelming. "This is as real as it gets."

000

Charles doesn't know what he has done.

Emma has an idea, but she isn't convinced, can't, not just yet.

000

He has four more days at most, and two more if Beast acquires exactly what he needs.

Tentative roots are growing and Charles needs to leave before something grounds him in place. But he wants and he wants, and he doesn't really want to go when everything that he has always _wanted_ is right where he is.

Charles thinks of a greater good.

One of co-existence.

And knows, he won't ever be happy again (because Erik is the knot he has tied and can't undo, and he'll have to fight him until the end.)

They aren't blind but it is close.

000

Before Erik finally decides to knock at his door, there is turmoil.

It is loud and crushing and by the time the rapping of knuckles sounds out, Charles' book has already been abandoned for waiting in uneasy silence.

_Come in._

The door swings open, Erik steps inside.

"…Is something wrong?" He starts because the door is closing and Erik still has his lips pulled into a flat line.

"Nothing." Erik runs a hand through his hair, fingertips wrestling with aggravation.

If he has been the previous Charles Xavier, the one who pulls strangers from dark unknown waters on a simple string of impulse, he would have pursued an elaborate explanation or a proper answer at the very least.

Erik stands by the door, biting at the insides of his cheeks.

"You know you can come in, Erik. This is your home, not mine's."

Erik seems caught up in something he doesn't know. He can always pry or read his mind but Charles remembers his past mistakes to know better. He doesn't need to know everything, it isn't always about him anyway.

"This isn't a home. This, it's just a temporary base for the Brotherhood."

"No wonder you didn't mind bringing the X-Men here." _You plan to leave as soon as we do._

"You're probably right." Erik walks up to the end of his bed, eyes hard, like he is determined for something to happen.

"Erik. Is there a reason for…this?"

"…I heard you've had weekly physiotherapy."

"Daily, if I get the time and the physiotherapist can come by."

Charles feels a sharp clench almost as intimately as Erik feels it. Foreign hands over his bare skin, sensations that borders on sensual, but something heated (a possessive minemine_mine_) soothes it over until Erik is picture perfect calm coiled with intentions. "…May I?"

"Are—" Charles' eyes are wide, his mind is filled with Erik's thoughts and he tries again with a slow swallow and a little more dignity, "are you asking to give me a leg massage?"

"Can I?" Erik's knees are pressed to the end of the bed and the room is too small, too fast.

"I—" He doesn't want this to be a pity party where Erik will guilt himself out of the blame and Charles will feel bad and sore all over again, like during those first two months of recovery. "I can't feel anything, you know."

"Let me?"

He doesn't know what he should expect. There is a calm resolute in the way Erik stares at him, eyes bent on getting what he came for. And Charles has never been good at saying no, not when he wants it even more.

"…Do as you like, Erik."

Charles lifts the sheets from his body.

There is a wash of sadness.

But Erik doesn't say anything, Charles don't know what he would have done if Erik pretends he doesn't feel a thing, he only toes off his shoes silently and climbs on to the bed. It dips underneath the added weight and it feels just like the months in 1962 that doesn't follow October.

Erik places his broad hands over his calf, wraps his fingers around the limb and stretches out his legs. He kneels in between and applies pressure to everywhere he can touch, everywhere Charles no longer receives sensation from and it is both fortunate and completely unfortunate.

Erik's thumbs press against the thin pyjama bottom Charles is wearing. There should be warmth, from his skin and the tips of his fingers, and there is but it is as though he is watching a soundless film where the picture is a clear black and white but nothing, not even static, is coming through.

It is a detachment. (A comfort, he reminds himself.) Something he hates and has, something he is grateful for.

Charles watches as Erik moves.

His knees press uncomfortable, he presumes because he can't actually feel anything, and it will always be a little uncomfortable (but its only because he can't let himself get used to this.)

Not when it doesn't last. Not when it can go on for infinity in a count of time.

_This doesn't do anything for me_, Charles thinks at Erik.

There is a glance, another one of those oh-really-I-think-nots that has Charles feeling uncomfortable in his own skin in a heartbeat. (But the itch subsides, and that might just be the only plus side, besides the fact that Erik's hands are moving over his body.)

"But it does everything for me." Erik says and the words pass through his lips like smoke, pungent and sweet, toxic and alluring all the same.

Charles shifts on the bed, doesn't like the way this is heading but loving the fact that Erik is still looking at him the same way.

"Charles, you," he looks down and the smile he has on his face is bittersweet, "you really have no idea what you do to me."

And maybe this has nothing to do with the body.

Charles can't look away, not from the wisps of light brown that falls when Erik has his head lowered like that, not when his eyes are green and dilated from a dark shade of what might be love.

Or maybe this is all in the mind.

Maybe one day, when he dies and his brain somehow survives all the damage, Erik would claim that too, just as he has done with everything else of Charles, and love it just as much. If not so much more. This imagery is sick but it sticks and he nearly smiles bitterly at their future and what could be.

Erik continues in a focused silence. And Charles knows there is more.

000

This happens after he finally figures it out.

But there are still time, one more hour, a few more days until that finally clicks into place.

And something is damaged for good.

000

She doesn't knock when it is obvious he knows she is coming, has known since the moment he has arrived at the current Brotherhood base. The door opens and she walks in with white trailing after her.

She doesn't take a seat, she doesn't yield to his smile when he does turn to face her.

"I'm not in debt to Magneto." Emma Frost says. _I won't tell him what you did._

"He rescued you from the government."

"For the time he tried to kill me in Russia, I'd say we're just about even."

"Erik wouldn't have killed you."

"No, I suppose you're right." Her smile is suddenly horribly all-knowing even when it should have always been this way. "I owe _you_ my life, don't I?"

"No." His lips are tight and he knows she is pushing at all the boundaries to make him fray. "Ms. Frost, that's not what I mean at all." But she doesn't know, he has been undone and in ruins of what he once was since he has met Erik.

"Save it, sugar." She genuinely looks down at him like he is making a terrible mistake. "You were the only reason he let anyone lived that day."

The truth makes him want to coil back, but he only feels a wretched pride that settles.

Emma lets out a soft laugh, faint with surprise and breathes out lightly, almost a gasp of delightful realization. "You're just like him."

_No, you're even—_

She doesn't really manage to get it out. Because a sharp painless shock severs all the thoughts in her head.

It takes a moment and Emma opens her eyes to see that she has fallen back into the chair behind her, knees suddenly weak. Her breath catches in her throat and her diamond shell is at edge, ready to cut and bring blood to cover the white.

"Ms. Frost," their heights are finally drawn to an even and he smiles gently right at her, hands clasped over his lap. "That's enough."

She watches, steel blue eyes, as he turns and wheels himself to the door. She sees a man who is not crippled in any sense of the word, not when his telepathy can compensate for everything else. She knows this feeling, intimately, it is fear mingled with awe.

Emma finally knows what Magneto sees in him.

Only then does she allow her voice to break over the short distance.

"…He is just that special, Xavier?"

"Erik," he still has his back towards her but he has never been fearful. It has always been everyone else. "He is so much more."

She sits on the chair with a faint tremor still running along her fingers until his mind no longer shadows over hers. The door swings to a closed stop and it isn't until then that she can finally breathe a little easier.

000

She doesn't tell anyone.

She doesn't even mention that Xavier never even lifted his fingers to his temple.

But he probably knows already.

_It is about damn time_, she thinks with a diamond cutting edge that can leave them both tattered if they were still intact. But they haven't been, not since they could hear voices in their heads, voices that aren't theirs to begin with.

Emma Frost lets it go.

000

Now he knows.

And nothing is better, only worst.

When Charles makes to grab at him, pull him back towards him, it feels like he is grabbing at torn metal sheets where all the edges are aiming for him to bleed out at their mercy. It is a drag of a blade. A carving of flesh, a rushing of blood. He wakes up in pain, a nightmare of chocolate that tastes of copper and metal coins pressing against skin, all with a pain that isn't his until that final shot is fired through the air.

But there is never really any, not anymore. He doesn't know why he doesn't let go, the water is his imagination and the waves are not real, he only knows why he holds on. And the reason is the same, always has been.

And nothing has changed.

He still wants his blood all over Erik's hands.

000

Erik sits at the edge of his bed with his feet in his lap and his eyes are cast down.

Charles wants to talk, wants to soothe whatever it is that seems to be growing but stuttering to a stop with every few inches of progress it makes. Erik tends to have that effect on him.

"Charles."

Erik is looking at him with sadness but it has nothing to do with his unfeeling legs. He looks as though he has done Charles wrong, and it still has nothing to do with the bullet that hits him in his back. Charles holds his breath, watches Erik's mouth part, sees the words fall from his tongue and teeth and pleading eyes.

"I want to tell you something."

He doesn't know, not just yet. Erik's eyes are almost bloodshot with no sleep and Charles is still innocent in all his ignorance. But it is all cutting horribly close.

There is something forgotten, something left out to drown with the part of Erik that he didn't quite manage to drag to the surface, Charles learns.

XXX Kuro

Full of snippets because Charles thinks like a broken record. And at this point, my hints are hardly subtle.


	3. You love me still

I don't own but slight warning: Because Charles is horrible and manipulative, and frankly, Erik is in love.

XXX

**You try, You lie, You love me still**

XXX

Listen to your heart, (_no_) not the voices in your head.

And still, you wish you could lose your feelings for the better part of the century to come.

000

They remember splashing, of waves washing up against the docks, of water rolling over sand. And it reminds them of a life they could but do not lead. He remembers feeling nothing and he remembers hearing his voice, echoing right within the deepest corner of his mind.

His fingers dig into his skin, nails biting and nearly pressuring him into staying.

And Erik does, the first time Charles asks. That, he won't deny.

_"I know everything about you, Erik."_

The second time, he has him in his arms (he has him on his mind.)

There are no ways around this.

It will always end this way.

000

"I have dreams, recurring dreams of you."

He starts.

_And only you._

000

Erik's hands are easing over his ankles, one at a time. Charles sees it all, from the movement of each long pianist finger to the droop of his own unfeeling joint. Erik's eyes don't look directly at him, they are hovering in and out of memories, his lips following, almost absentmindedly.

"Since Cu—" He stops himself and begins again because the words are uncomfortable but the underlying meanings physically hurt. "It started about 2 months after I left."

Charles listen, tries to understand but it feels like he is grasping at something just out of his reach.

"At first I thought you were reaching out to me through telepathy." A fading spark, a silent hope. "But I always have the helmet on, I knew it wasn't real. Not the way I wanted it. The things your voice would say is unsettling, sometimes it is a variation based off of conversations we once had but mostly, it was just you, the one in my head, telling me things that doesn't seem to connect, not immediately anyway."

His hands pause, he rests them over Charles' shin, feels the body warmth even Charles can't feel himself.

"It seems like you are telling me parts of a larger conversation, filling me in on something I am missing."

Charles looks away from Erik's hands, looks the man in the eyes and reassures him. "You're not mad, Erik."

There is a soft, almost self-deprecating, laugh that holds no real mirth. "No, I suppose not. I just—"_miss you too much._

Erik leans in, waits and allows Charles the choice to pull away, because he will understand.

"Some days, the only thing keeping me going is remembering that first night. Of the both of us in the water, and you telling me for the first time, Charles. That I'm not alone."

000

Erik dreams and knows the better man to be buried in a mass grave back in Auschwitz.

He allows Charles to put his fingers to his temple, give over the reigns. He lets Charles see what he has been seeing since the beach.

And this, in his own head, he can finally say out loud.

000

Erik kisses differently.

It isn't unpleasant.

It is just unlike everything Charles has always known.

000

Erik's intricate mind lays bare before him, spread out and when Charles is confronted, he finally sees the missing links in their past.

He sees himself in each dormant slip of the brain and it is nothing but him. Broken, jagged shards of another Charles F. Xavier imbedding himself in all the tender areas of Erik's mind. He sucks in a breath and can't bear to let it out.

Even Erik's mother is not his own, not anymore.

000

There is turbulence, dry claps of thunder in their youths, water slowly filling their lungs. The world around him is a dark blue and.

_You're not alone._

That is the start of it all. His voice echoes in his own head and it is true.

Erik isn't Erik, but the worst possible reflection of himself.

Because Charles has always been on his own. And their world has become a fake construction featuring no one else but him.

He feels a whirlwind of emotions dominated by anger and a bitter mantra of nonono_no_. But the water push and pull at them and in his desperation to save, he makes a fatal mistake that breaks any and all morality he has ever held close to his chest.

He shifts something in the man's mind, he doesn't notice, not until now.

And it grows until it has integrated itself into the anger and pain.

There is a mark, a 214782, a press of _comfort_, that Charles mercilessly carves in between the memories and intangible anger and pain that beats with each sound of the heart.

A trigger is cocked and ready to be pulled (by a pale English hand peppered with freckles) and Erik Lehnsherr is in love before the bullet is even fired from the barrel.

Neither is in control anymore. It takes a life of its own.

000

Charles pulls back.

He has his fingers around Erik's wrists. It is too tight, too suffocating, and it feels just right.

"Erik," he breathes out, "the dreams."

"Yes…?"

"…Are they vivid?"

"…They started like voice recordings. Just the sound of your voice for a few weeks." Erik looks disgruntle with offering details. "And then I can talk back, engage. Sometimes you, the voice wouldn't reply and sometimes it would." Sometimes there is even the feeling of a hand on my arm, fingers grazing at my cheek. Lips terribly closed to my ear, "just telling me that I'm not alone." _And I never should be._

Charles ache in Erik's brutal honesty.

"The dreams don't feel like dreams. They," Erik catches his eyes, he furrows his brows, "they feel like memories."

_Of a past we never had._

Charles echoes back, knowing, finally.

000

He is always trying to make, to break, to tear down the old foundation lying in ruins and fit in the new. But this isn't what he wants, no, it is exactly what he wants.

And sometimes, he loses his way when there are no blue eyes leading the way.

000

"Raven."

She doesn't bother with correcting him, she even goes as far as to accommodate. In his drug dazed days, he has seen her enter his room when Erik is busy with Brotherhood matters and the boys have checked in with him. She steers clear of the time when he is fully awake and only walks in to brush his hair from his face or brings in tea for when he wakes.

"Erik told me to bring you breakfast."

Charles also knows she is the one that pressed the first aid kit into Erik's hands when they first arrived. And there are some things that will never change between them. He is glad.

"Thank you."

She puts the tray on his lap, stands back and without actively trying to read her emotions, Charles is lost to the way she leans and stares, teeth biting on her lower lip. He waits, slowly starts on the eggs before she is standing straight once more and something in her eyes sharpen into determination, he supposes.

"Erik is loyal." _To the Brotherhood, to the cause, to you._ He doesn't read her mind and she leaves it unsaid.

"…He isn't a dog."

"No, he isn't." She shakes her head and the determination fades into sadness. "He is so much worst when I see the way you _look_ at him. And the way he, it's like—"

She sucks in a breath in her urgency, she can't let the men she believed in fall apart. "He has trouble sleeping! Even the sleeping pills I slip into his water doesn't help. He—"

"Raven."

Her eyes widen and she is finally seeing them crumble when she can still stand strong.

"Erik, he is becoming the worst version of you."

And because she loved the two of them, she refuse to wrench apart the lies, Raven leaves the room, lingering something Charles doesn't realize until much later to be pity.

The horror never comes, not while he still doesn't know.

000

Erik shakes his head, pulls back so he is sitting straight on the bed again. And this is probably as close to pleading as Charles will ever see this man to be. There is a frown but there is no disappointment.

"You won't stay."

"I—"

"You can't stay."

It is almost like he needs reassurance.

"…No, I suppose not."

"We aren't capable of compromise." He eyes the wheelchair and Charles knows it will always be hard for Erik because that metal frame is a stark reminder that he can't ever forget. He catches the wisps of thoughts on the surface of Erik's mind, almost wistful and solemn. _And I've done you too much wrong._

My friend, that, you are completely right. "I'm sorry too." _I am still doing something wrong all this time._

But Charles fears he will always be the one who can never come clean. And he only ever asks for the things he knows everyone else is willing to part with.

"Can I… kiss you, again?"

"I have always been yours for the taking, Charles."

And a vice grip clenches around his heart.

(It hurts almost as much as 1962.)

000

Alex is a coiled spring.

"I suppose you can't work anything faster?" He stands off to the side, shifting his weight from leg to leg.

"I don't want to be here anymore than you do."

Alex isn't observant but he is learning to care. He breathes himself into a regular rhythm and lets the anger fade from his eyes. Hank's shoulders are tight with tension.

"What if… how would…" He breathes out and tries again. "What if the professor wants to stay?"

Beast hates the possibilities and loathes his honesty even more.

"Then we let him."

"And the school?"

"Scrap the idea and try something else we can actually do?"

"But—"

"It is his choice, we have no say."

000

He doesn't return to his own room and stays the night. The doors are closed, their eyes are opened, and really, they should finally see.

(But they don't, they never do.)

"This isn't fate, Erik. It's faith."

He doesn't know who he is trying to convince.

Because this argument will never work on the man in front of him.

Erik doesn't treat him any different. He still looks at him with those hungry eyes, like he sees what he can't have and Charles feels the same. Erik won't reach out, touch him or tilt his head when they kiss (even when he wants it, almost as much as Charles does.)

"No, Charles. This is your blind hope for my redemption." It's a nice word, a kinder version of what he has had in mind for months and months on end but he looks at Charles and Charles is still forgiving him. He swallows the beating heart in his throat but still it comes out hoarse and nearly broken. "Haven't you learned anything? I am not that person."

He isn't one for mercy but he is willing to spare Charles from any more pain.

"And I won't ever be."

He doesn't want all those second chances.

"Neither am I."

Charles knows and it is almost enough for him to understand. He isn't Erik's perfection.

000

He knows of all the ways he can act.

The path he has taken for a passive equality by playing good and docile. The path Erik has taken for a violent bloodbath of mutant supremacy and it hasn't come to this, but it will, soon. There is also compromise, and the choice of an entire withdrawal from the world.

But they are no good and they only want the one thing that is the worst for them.

000

"Erik, you know full well what I am capable of."

Erik has got up in the morning in a bed that smells like Charles and it is pleasant when he turns his head to catch dark brown hair buried into a pillow. He pushes back the bangs, Charles gives a tired murmur and the early morning sun filters through the blinds. They are both still clothed and everything is suddenly just simple.

It is late in the evening when Erik finds Charles, once more, in another room of the temporary Brotherhood, nursing a drink he shouldn't have in the first place, not with the injuries that are still trying to heal themselves.

"I can make you forget who you are. I can turn you into a whole other person."

They aren't facing each other. Charles is looking out the windows and Erik is still standing by the doors.

"And I…" he swallows and they both know he is far from tipsy even, "I can make you come back to me."

Charles finally turns around and it is far worst. Because instead of anger, Erik only looks hurt.

"…Would you? Would you really do it if you had the chance?"

"No, I couldn't." And it is the truth, as long as that helmet exists, he can't ever delve into Erik's mind and shape the raw edges into something he can touch without bleeding all over the place.

Erik's expression doesn't change, he looks like he has given up on the world. (But hasn't he? Erik has never believed in humanity, he has only believed in cruelty.) Charles doesn't blame him because the alternate truth stands parallel: Yes, he would. He will take that chance and change everything without a second thought. Warp a world into something he can bear to look at. And no one would have known.

_Because the answer is yes. Yes, I would. I would make you love me and it won't hurt like the first time._

000

He remembers the pressure of his lips, that part is real.

But the intentions aren't.

Not when the emotions Erik feels in his heart is a fabrication of Charles' own making. Still Charles never tells, he lies, and Erik's love is a secret he will carry to the grave with shame and pride.

"Can you…?"

Erik is wanting, eyes dilating as they darken. This is the night before they both know he will leave but they don't say it out loud. They haven't given up, this is just them giving in.

"Yes, somewhat."

Charles doesn't have to look, but he does, because he is a reflection of Erik. And they are very much the same.

"What can I do?" He asks but his lips are still close, still red and slick with Charles' spit. And it might just be a little much, if not, not enough.

"I… I can show you how, if you like."

Charles leans away, wraps his arms around his neck and pulls Erik into his lap. There is love in his eyes but he feels like he is drowning. He peppers kisses along Erik's jaw, untucks the shirt from his pants and runs a palm along the span of his back, fingertips tracing the bumps of Erik's spine.

"I would like that."

_When this is all over, Erik, you'll hate me. And this sentiment I have for you won't ever change, you see. _(But it doesn't end, not for a long long time.)

Charles always falls silent, especially when it finally matters.

000

It is May 1984. It is inside news but they know it all the same: the Mutants Registration Act.

Still, they haven't given up. (But that comes later, much later.)

In Charles' head, it starts in a fashion that is somewhat like this.

"Senator Kelly."

The man will look down at him with a disconcerting eye and see a man in a wheelchair. But he has already lost all his hair and the lines on his face have sharpened. "I trust you understand that you are making a huge mistake here."

It ends in the same way Erik tells him, days before, when the act first surfaced.

"Identification, Charles, and then they will be branding numbers on our heads."

His hand lingers on the other's shoulder, fingertips light and heavy on skin that he can feel, but that is the extent of the contact they allow anymore. (Any more and it might just be everything they have always yearned for.) And they can't have that. No, not again, not when they are still capable of bringing it all to another horrific end.

"No, there is no mistake here. _Professor_."

Charles fights a lost cause for a man who doesn't believe in it, in the same way Erik is too.

"You'll regret this, senator."

Charles has always been a foolish man and Erik, he is finally right.

His fingers never even touch his temple.

000

"Professor."

"Ah, yes. Hank. It's done then."

Beast nods.

He suppose, it will always come to this.

It is three days after.

"Then tomorrow is goodbye."

000

He doesn't know what he is asking for when he opens his mouth but it comes and he no longer wants to fight, not when the one standing opposite is Erik, not when this will end the same way he has imagined it to end. And this time, not even the loss of his legs will be enough.

Not by a long run, at the very least.

This isn't about compensation. So _retaliation_ rings out loud instead.

This is about.

Charles thinks and it hurts when it comes.

This isn't about anything. (Not when they still have each other to cling and grasp at when the surface never comes.)

"Bring me peace."

He knows he is asking the wrong man for the _impossible_ and again, that word echoes louder than his telepathy ever could. And he is still guilty, for so many deeds. Because the blood on his hands are not his own, it is Erik's and Erik never even knew Charles has slashed him right open from the back.

"I," Erik falters at Charles' request and this is the final time, they are really no good with compromise. "I am not your peace."

Only it is never that easy. Charles has given too much but it isn't enough. No, he can't have the one thing he truly wants. The same thing, that one thing, Erik can forgive the world for. And yes, this is only the start of a tragic struggle, the indication of years and years of push and pull (when they only ever want is to let go.)

"Bring me peace, Erik. That is the only thing I ask of you." But it isn't. He wants it all.

Erik smiles, it is still bittersweet, and Magneto picks up the helmet when Erik's hands tremor.

The desperation is thick, almost enough to bring tears to their eyes. Charles knows Erik is incapable of forgiveness, so he won't ever tell, he knows. Charles sits still in his wheelchair as Erik slips on that dreaded helmet.

(_You're my anger and my pain, Charles. You're the only thing I can draw my power from. There's no in between._)

And still, they stand strong and nothing changes.

Except.

Their stance in a war they can't control.

"You'll see, Charles. Peace is not for us."

It starts with this.

(But it isn't peace, not by a very long shot.)

XXX Kuro

Also, if you haven't caught on, this is basically Charles incepting Erik without either of them knowing.


End file.
